"Listen Ness. I'm going to tell you something very important. You may want to take notes. Ready? ......You're the chosen one."

— Talking Rock

EarthBound is a twist on the standard RPG setting for the SNES that follows the story of Ness, a seemingly normal boy who lives in Eagleland. Late one night, a meteorite landing outside town awakens Ness. The meteorite brings with it a bee (or not) from the future, who tells Ness of its devastation at the hands of an indestructible being called Giygas — a being Ness is destined to defeat. Ness's journey to stop Giygas will take him through time and space to meet the remainder of the Chosen Four (Paula, Jeff, and Poo) and collect the Eight Melodies for his Sound Stone to unite the power of Earth as his own.

EarthBound is the second of a series of Japanese role playing games known as MOTHER, an experiment in storytelling in a different medium by Japanese essayist Shigesato Itoi. MOTHER 2: Gyiyg no Gyakushū (or Gyiyg Strikes Back, as it's called in Japanese) serves as a loose sequel to MOTHER, since the two games share the same essential setting (an affectionate homage to idealized America). Of the three games in the MOTHER series, only EarthBound ever received a physical release in North America (as Nintendo has eventually digitally released the unproduced localization of the first game and has not currently released an official English translation of MOTHER 3).

On the 17th of April 2013, Nintendo confirmed that it would release EarthBound for the Wii U Virtual Console in North America. It also announced a similar release for the game in Europe, marking the first release of EarthBound in that region. While fans waited for the Virtual Console release, they had to content themselves with a ROM of the game or track down an original cartridge — which, due to intense demand and limited supply, usually didn't (and still don't) go for less than $200 outside of garage sales and such. (That price usually means the cartridge itself, too.) On the 19th of July 2013, Nintendo finally re-released the game via Virtual Console (in both Europe and the US) at the far-lower-than-eBay-auctions price point of $9.99; to round out the package, it also digitized the original Player's Guide that it bundled with the SNES release and offered it up for free (so that gamers could read the guide in a browser, including using the Wii U's browser on the GamePad). Nintendo also re-released the game on the New Nintendo 3DS and the New Nintendo 3DS XL handheld systems as a part of their Super Nintendo Virtual Console in early March 2016 note this excludes the original Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo 3DS XL and Nintendo 2DS.

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